Care work

Before the Industrial Revolution, care work (such as taking care of the household and raising children) was done by the entire family, and often involved the contributions of an entire community. In this sense, the core sphere was not seen as separate from daily business interactions, because the idea of the market did not yet exist as it does today.

With the dawn of the Industrial Era, the core sphere became more separate from jobs and business, which were performed outside and away from the home. Largely as a product of patriarchal societies, men became the ones who left the home to do their work in factories and other non-domestic jobs. Women, who were considered better suited to nurturing, were left at home and expected to provide childcare and do the housework. This familial hierarchy persisted and has continued to show itself in the contemporary American family, with a breadwinner father, a homemaker mother, and their children. However, not all families were structured as such. Contrary to White women, Black women and women of color were expected to work. Almost 80 percent of single black women compared to 23.8 percent of single white women worked in 1880.[9] Despite the typical declining rates of labor participation after marriage among white women, labor force participation remained stable for black women. Thus, both black men and women financially contributed to the household.

Domestic work arose as an important element in caring and maintaining a stable workforce. With the abolition of slavery in the U.S., African American women were increasingly hired as domestic workers. The history of domestic work in the United States is one of gender, racial, citizenship, and class hierarchies. Despite domestic work being a paid job, it was not recognized as real work by either the law or society. Because domestic work lies within the private sphere and is typically performed by women, it was often depicted as an "act of love" or rewarding in itself.[10] This mentality has served as a justification for the lack of legal protections in this area of work that exist even today, such as in the exclusion of domestic workers from the National Labor Relations Act, guaranteeing the right to form labor unions. Similarly, "live-in" workers such as "live-in" nannies and housekeepers are still not provided overtime protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act.[11] Whether women worked or stayed in the home, their duties were believed to be unimportant and were largely ignored.[6]

This issue persists today in the field of economics. Acts performed in the home often carry considerable replacement costs but are not factored into productivity. It is possible to pay others to perform many of the tasks associated with care work, but to do so is often prohibitively expensive. When adding up the potential costs of work such as round-the-clock childcare, housekeeping, cooking, and the cost of a person such as a home health aide to provide care for elderly family members, it proves much more cost effective for families to substitute their time rather than pay the replacement cost. While paid care work is considered employment, work undertaken by family members is not counted as productive towards the economic market and is therefore overlooked when considering things such as employment status.[7]

Despite persisting complications regarding the perception of care work, the economic environment has changed from what it was a century ago. Many more women now participate in the labor force at least part-time, and many more believe that the "cult of domesticity" for women of the 19th and 20th centuries is a thing of the past.[6] However, studies show that women have come to dominate caring professions - such as teaching, childcare, nursing, social work - and that most of these professions are paid considerably less than the occupations more frequently held by men. To add to this, women frequently are still expected to do the housework and to raise the children in many families. The persisting idea that care work is unimportant combined with these factors explains why care work continues to be ignored from an economic point of view, and why women still have a difficult time shirking gender roles.[6]

Many studies have shown that women provide the majority of unpaid childcare, while some have shown men to be more likely to support the elderly than to care for children. The comparative willingness of women to perform unpaid care work has historically contributed to the poor compensation received by people in care-based professions. The historical and cultural pressure on women to provide these services without assurance of financial compensation has devalued care work, leading to these professions being heavily underpaid in comparison to professions which require a similar amount of training and work but are not equivalent to any domestically performed tasks.[7]

Women also carry a heavier burden of care work in the home in comparison to men. This is largely due to differences in gender socialization as well as historical and cultural traditions. The biological differences explain that women show more affection and love in performing care work when compared with men. As they are growing up, women are taught to be more caring and affectionate in their behavior, compared to their male counterparts.[12] This does not imply however that women are more biologically predisposed to do care work. Historical and cultural traditions explain the widely held ideology of women's role in caring for others.[13] In Nepal women work 21 more hours each week than men, and in India, 12 more hours. In Kenya 8- to 14-year-old girls spend 5 hours more on household chores than boys. In all these cases most of these extra work hours for women are spent on care work.[14] This poses a particular problem for women in that these extra hours of domestic care work translate into a difficult balance for women between market work and domestic work.[15] Since the division of household labor women have not been given many choices other than care work as patriarchal systems have used their physical force, property rights, and cultural norms to force women to take over specializations that are deemed unfit for men.

The creation of separate spheres, public and private, in the nineteenth century contributed to the belief that caring was incompatible with the workplace and belonged to the family only.[16] The historical push of women into care work combined with the contemporary dominance of women in these fields, accounts for the modern conceptions that care work is inherently feminine work. However, care work is not naturally feminized. Instead, care work is only socialized into a feminine sphere, and is also done by males. Despite the social nature of the feminization of care work, it has become so feminized that there is often a stigma against men who engage in care work.[17] This stigma may discourage men from entering care work as well as further propagate the belief that care work is inherently women's work. Moreover, the conflation of women's work and care work can lead to the ignoring of cultural, political, racial, and ethnic differences among women.[10]

Furthermore, there are many differences in earning between high school graduates and college graduates. This difference is especially pertinent between male and female individuals searching for a job. If unemployed, the differences between the rates of high school graduates and college graduates may even be similar. However, women tend to find more opportunities in unpaid care work if they are unable to get into the paid work force. If individuals are unable to achieve a degree, they will not meet the threshold of what many jobs require. This inevitability is felt by much of the world population who are unable to attend school due to staying in their household to take care of elderly or sick family members.[13]

Recently, individual people are not the only ones who claim to provide care. An increasing number of companies are claiming that they will care for you in order to attract you into purchasing their services. For example, Lufthansa, an airline company, had an advertisement that read, "Service as dependable as a shoulder to lean on." The accompanying picture displayed a woman leaning her head on a man's shoulder, with both sound asleep. In this case, the take-away message seems to be that a high degree of care translates into high quality. Another airline company, British Airways, had an ad that displayed the same message. It read, "New Club World cradle seat. Lullaby not included." The image accompanying the statement showed a woman caring for a baby in her arms. The baby's head, however, was switched with that of a relaxed and content passenger. These are only a few of the companies that are now promoting themselves as care-oriented in order to gain customers.[18]

Most paid care work is performed by members of the working class, predominantly women of the working class. Most of the paid work that members of the working class perform is care work.[19] The domestic workforce, for example, is composed of approximately 2.2 million workers in the U.S., out of which a large majority (91.5%) are women. Half of these identify as Black, Hispanic, or Asian American Pacific Islander. Black and Hispanic women are particularly overrepresented in the domestic workforce.[11] About 35% of domestic workers were not born in the U.S., thus this particular workforce is composed of a large proportion of immigrant women of color.[11] Scholars have described this phenomenon as the 'international division of reproductive labor' or 'care chain'.[20] In this 'chain', housework is commodified. Those women who can afford it pay other women, usually immigrant women of color, to do their housework. Back in their home country, other women perform their housework for them. Care work does not necessarily have to be face-to-face. Scholar Hung Cam Thai, for instance, in his study of Vietnamese transnational marriages suggests that migrant remittances can be considered a form of care work as well.[21]

Devaluation theory seeks to explain the low-wages that are typical of care work by focusing on the fact that many care workers are women and that gender-based biases remain in societies. In short, devaluation theory asserts that decision makers under- estimate the contribution of female dominated jobs to organizational goals, including profits, and therefore underpay these workers.[3]

The devaluation theory is supported by sociological studies. In 2002, sociologist Paula England conducted a studying that revealed, even after controlling for skill demands, educational requirements, industry, and sex composition, a net penalty of 5%–10% for working in an occupation involving care was found (one exception was nursing, which did not seem to experience the pay penalty of other care work).[3] Overall, the evidence suggests that care work pays less than would be expected, given its educational and other requirements. However, it is not necessarily clear that this relation is caused by discriminatory factors, although it is a likely explanatory factor.

Care work has a multitude of indirect social benefits that associate it with a specific type of good known as a public goods; goods that have benefits that are impossible to deny to those who have not paid for them.[3] Education, an example of care work, is a classic example of a public good. Care work is unique in the category of public goods, however, in that receiving care also helps recipients develop skills, values, and habits that benefit themselves and others.[23] In short, care work, by developing peoples internal capacities, imbues them with future abilities to contribute to society in the form of a public good.

This theory may explain the low-wages characteristic of care work. The standard economic argument is that public goods will be underprovided by markets because there is no way to capture and turn into profits benefits that come through social interaction.[3]

Care work has been defined as work that provides services based on sustained personal interaction, and is motivated (at least in part) by concern about the recipient's welfare.[2] This understanding of care work has distinct effects both on the nature and wages of care work. If care workers are actually motivated by an intrinsic value for the work which they do, then economic theory asserts that they will tolerate lower wages for their work.[3] In this sense, the low-wages of care work may be explained. Further, the connection that these workers feel to their work puts them in a poor bargaining position.[24] For example, nurses may be reluctant to strike because a strike would negatively affect their patients whom they care about.

Commoditization of emotion theory focuses on the effects of marketized care work on the care workers' personal experiences and individual well-being. The commoditization of emotion theory asserts that many jobs in the new service economy require workers to act emotions they do not really feel and that this process is harmful to workers.[3] For example, the commoditization of childcare may be overly emotionally exhausting on childcare workers due to the conflict between the natural emotions of this job and these workers' need for pay. Arlie Russell Hochschild explores this theory in The Managed Heart.

The "Love and Money" theory attempts to reconcile the perceived divide between work done for intrinsic motivation and work done for pay. Theorists assert that because male and female are seen as opposite, and because gender schema organize so much of our thinking, we develop a dualistic view that "women, love, altruism, and the family are, as a group, radically separate and opposite from men, self-interested rationality, work, and market exchange."[3] This belief has led to the idea that care work should not be done for pay because pay will undermine the intrinsic motivations for this work. However, studies have shown that these divides may not be so stark. Instead, it has been found that acknowledging rewards send the message that the recipient is trusted, respected, and appreciated These results suggest that the more that pay is combined with trust and appreciation, the less it drives out genuine intrinsic motivation—especially important in care work.[3] As a result, theorists argue that the central problem with care work is under-demand and that care work should be better compensated by the market.[25]

For example, The Unremunerated Work Act of 1993 would require the Bureau of Labor Statistics to conduct surveys that would measure unpaid labor and include these measures in the GDP. This bill was supported by many but not all feminist economists. Critics argue that this bill would romanticize care work and propagate gender biases in the field. Other critics argue that care work can be performed more efficiently outside the home. Finally, some critics believe that this would create a move for care givers to value efficiency over affection, quantity and quality.[28]

Accounting for time spent in unpaid care is extremely difficult because it is often an emotionally involved activity that is not always reported as singular activities. This becomes even more difficult because there is a "social desirability" bias. For example, husbands will often report more time spent devoted to care work than their wives would report for them, and vice versa. People do this because providing care is considered praiseworthy. Thus, it is hard to make a survey that can get accurate results. However, most of the problems can be minimized through the use of a time diary. This method involves respondents describing the activities that they performed during the previous day. The responses are then standardized for analysis purposes. For example, "eating sandwich" and "drinking juice" would both be considered as "eating."[29]

Women in 32 countries provide an estimated annual $1.5 trillion in health care, according to a study published in The Lancet, a leading medical journal. If unpaid care work performed by women were compensated at even just minimum wage around the world, this would boost measured global economic output by $12 trillion, which is 11% of global economic output and is equivalent to the annual economic output of China, according to a study the McKinsey Global Institute.[30]

A second policy relating to care work is the push for higher wages in the sphere of paid care work. Advocates of this policy believe that individuals who respect and fulfill norms of care will be seen as losers in the competitive economic game, if wages are not increased. Due to this stigma, some economists argue that there may be a gradual erosion of the supply of unpaid care services in the system.[26] Therefore, in order to encourage care work, these proponents advocate for higher wages for care work. However, not all feminist economists believe that higher wages would be appropriate for care work. For example, those who ascribe to the commoditization of emotion framework argue that higher wages may push out true caring emotions in care workers.

A third policy debate surrounding care work involves the feminization of care work and focuses on an attempt to make care work more gender neutral, or at least, less disproportionately burdensome to women. One model set forth to address these disparities is the universal-breadwinner model which aims at achieving equity through women's employment and parity with men. The caregiver- parity model promotes increased support for informal care work and on forms of employment for women, such as part-time employment, that would increase their time available to provide domestic care work. The first model shifts care and reproductive work to the market and the state, whereas the second keeps care work within the household with support from public funds. Yet both models, to an extent, lift the burden of care work off of women and transfer it either toward the state or toward men.[15][31]

Another model is Shared Earning/Shared Parenting Marriage, which involves not transfer payments from taxpayers to women for women to do the care work, but men actually taking responsibility for half the care work themselves, and women taking half the financial responsibility of basic needs of the family. The fact that paternity is now inexpensively provable is used to support recognition of this model. This model is also focused on improving the experience of children and removing developmental distortions from the feminization of care, such as those that arise from symbiotic mothering or paternal neglect trauma.

A meta analysis by Jenny Young et al. from 2020 found that research on care work is under-reporting male care workers, such that the experience of men is understood less well. Previously in 1989, Sara Arber et al. referred to men as "the forgotten carers" and found that they have a larger share of care work than is often recognized.[32][33]

Care work, in that it is disproportionally done by women and is also often unpaid, highlights the importance of the larger issue of considering gender in economic policy. As a result, many economists argue that gender analysis should be an essential part in the consideration of any economic policy.[27]

Care work is a universal force, but it is manifested differently across the world due to differences in a number of factors including the availability of domestic service, the extent of the informal economy, and international migration.[15] For this reason, economists argue that there are differences between Northern and Southern countries that would influence the effectiveness of certain policies in the South. Public policies suggested for these regions include increased availability of day care centers, greater access to schools, greater access to health care, improved public transportation, increased access to telephones and more.[15]